The joint development of the Qatargas 3 and Qatargas 4 LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) integrated projects is a major construction undertaking, employing some 20,000 workers to build Trains 6 and 7 for Qatargas. These projects, each with a massive 7.8 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) LNG train, will bring total production for Qatargas to 42 mtpa.

‘Shell in the Middle East’ goes to Qatar to see how the construction of the onshore site is progressing and looks at the pipeline project to bring the gas from Qatar’s North Field to the two LNG trains. Qatargas 3 is a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum, ConocoPhillips and Mitsui, while Qatargas 4 is a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum and Shell. A Joint Asset Development Team was formed to capitalise on synergies and economies of scale by building the two LNG trains as an integrated development project with common facilities...

“In order to capture substantial synergies from the development of Qatargas 3 and Qatargas 4 onshore and offshore assets, these are being jointly executed by a Joint Asset Development Team,” explains Mike Britton, Senior Project Manager for the Qatargas 3&4 Joint Asset Development Team.

Personnel working on the Qatargas 3&4 project include secondees from Shell and ConocoPhillips, as well as Qatargas staff, whilst other team members have been directly contracted for the project.

Once completed, Qatargas 3 and Qatargas 4, along with Qatargas 2, will be amongst the biggest LNG plants in the world. Qatargas 3 is a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum with 68.5 per cent, Mitsui with 1.5 per cent and ConocoPhillips with 30 per cent. Qatargas 4 is a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum with 70 per cent and Shell with 30 per cent.

“The LNG trains are an APCI design,” says Mike, “The largest LNG train to date has a capacity of 4.7 million tonnes per annum so the new trains will be 66 per cent larger than anything that has been in operation before.”

To feed natural gas to the two LNG trains there are three production platforms in Qatar’s North Field, some 65 kilometres offshore. From these production platforms two 38-inch pipelines will each bring some 1.4 billion standard cubic feet of gas per day to the onshore gas inlet at Ras Laffan Industrial City, where the condensate propane and butane will be recovered from the gas prior to it being converted into LNG.

“I am pleased with the way the offshore work has progressed and to date we have had no LTIs [Lost Time Incidents] in offshore drilling, which is a major achievement,” he says.

“The common facilities for the two trains will provide power from a state-of-the-art generating unit producing 200 megawatts of electricity, which is enough power to run a small town.

“The gas will be refrigerated through a sophisticated process which turns the gas into a liquid, reducing its temperature to minus 163 degrees centigrade. The finished product will be delivered to markets around the world. “The construction of so many LNG units in Qatar has definitely been challenging with regard to the availability of contractors, equipment and personnel. There are currently well over 100,000 labourers working in Ras Laffan Industrial City on three major LNG projects and the Pearl GTL project.

“However, despite all the challenges, we have been able to maintain a very high level of safety with our LTIs running at around 0.2 per million man hours worked.

“We are fortunate to have some very competent and experienced people in the team and I am proud of the progress we have made to date,” Mike concludes.

The civil underground construction work on this enormous site began in 2006 and to date over 45 per cent of the construction work and nearly all the engineering and procurement has been completed.

Jim Gardiner, Onshore Project Manager for the Qatargas 3&4 Project, says, “The total area of the site for Qatargas 3, which is the sixth LNG train for Qatargas, and Qatargas 4, which is the seventh LNG train for Qatargas, measures some 1,278,317 square metres, which is almost 1.3 square kilometres.

“The main contractor is Chiyoda Technip Joint Venture [CTJV] but there are three principal sub-contractors. Gama is responsible for the construction and installation of the gas inlet facility and the common utilities. CCIC is responsible for the construction of the two LNG trains, whilst Nasser Al Hajri is responsible for the construction of the four sulphur recovery units. These units separate the hydrogen sulphide from the inlet gas then convert it into liquid sulphur, which is then pumped to the Common Sulphur Project, located in the port area.

“The two LNG trains will have common utilities for steam, power generation, air and water,” says Jim. “There will also be a common gas inlet and slug catcher at the onshore end of the pipeline bringing the gas from the North Field. The job of the slug catcher is to remove liquids such as water and condensate.”

Together, all the contractors employ around 20,000 staff from a wide range of nationalities, primarily from India, Nepal, Turkey and the Philippines. Most of the workforce live in accommodation within Ras Laffan Industrial City.

Says Jim, “HSE [Health, Safety & Environment] is one of the main issues here and we run a programme called IIF [Incident and Injury Free], based on the concept that everyone goes home safe every day. To date our injury statistics are at world-class standards. We have worked over 70 million man hours with 15 LTIs. Nonetheless, some workers on the project have been injured so our focus on safety will continue to be relentless for the duration of the project.

“We run a ‘Stop Card’ system, whereby anyone on site can stop the work going on if they see something happening which they think is unsafe. We run a number of induction and safety courses, including courses for charge hands, riggers and people working at heights. We also have regular stand-downs for the whole site when we feel we have the need to get specific messages over to all the workers on the site.

“We hold ‘tool-box talks’ to drive home the safety message at the start of each working day. Jobs with specific safety issues requiring permits to work are addressed separately. This is a huge site physically, very, very large, with a lot of people and hundreds of vehicles - cranes, diggers, bulldozers and other heavy equipment - all working at the same time, so safety is paramount.

“We are facing daily challenges which most of us have not faced before. The site is very big but the two trains and their ancillary facilities are also very big. We are working in a restricted space and need to be aware of what is going on around us continuously.

“The technical complexity of much of the plant is also very challenging, with many novel designs for different pieces of equipment. The most significant of these is the Frame 9 gas turbine compressor strings in the LNG trains, a world-first for LNG.

“At 7.8 million tonnes per annum production capacity, each of these two LNG trains, along with two trains from Qatargas 2, will be the largest in the world.

“It is a real achievement to build something as big and as complicated as this in the time frame that is available, with such a multitude of people, contractors, companies and cultures. That said, we expect the work to be completed around the end of the decade,” Jim concludes.

Pat Wild is Offshore Pipeline Project Manager for the Qatargas 3&4 Joint Asset Development Team. She says, “The pipeline project for Qatargas 3&4 can be viewed as beginning in 2006, with the issue of the purchase order for the line pipe to Mitsui in Japan. The combined lengths of the pipeline for the Qatargas 3&4 will total some 130 kilometres and will consist of two separate 38-inch pipelines and two 22-inch pipelines to join them together at Wellhead Platform 9 [WHP 9] in the field.

“One 38-inch pipeline will come from WHP 7, which is offshore in the North Field, to the Qatargas LNG complex onshore in Ras Laffan Industrial City, and the second 38-inch pipeline will come from WHP 8, also in the North Field. Two 22-inch pipelines, called ‘spurlines’, interconnect the two 38-inch pipelines at WHP 9, which sits between the 38-inch pipelines.”

Another part of Pat’s area of responsibility is for the installation of four subsea composite fibre optic/power cables to provide communications and power to three wellhead platforms.

She explains, “The pipe joints - the individual sections of the pipelines - were shipped from Japan to Ras Al Khaimah in the UAE, where they underwent coating. They were first given an external anti-corrosion coating, which was then followed by a concrete coating to provide the necessary weight to submerge the pipelines and keep them stable on the sea bed. They also received an internal coating using a Shell proprietary coating called ENSIS DW 1262 to protect the internal surface from corrosion.

“The pipe joints will be hauled on pipe haul barges to offshore Qatar. Once there, the pipe joints will be loaded on to the J. Ray McDermott KP1 lay barge. Due to the shallow waters off the coast of Ras Laffan Industrial City the lay barge cannot get closer than two kilometres to the shore. This means that we have to start welding the pipe joints into a pipeline some two kilometres offshore, and attach a pulling head on the first joint of pipe to a messenger line, or steel cable, that is attached to a Lucker winch system onshore.

“The first pipe joint is attached to the cable and the entire shore approach section of the pipeline is provided with sufficient flotation to stop it from sinking to the sea floor and to stop it dragging along the sea bed. The first two kilometres of pipeline are pulled to the shore by the Lucker winch system. Once the first part of the pipeline has been laid the lay barge moves away from the shore to the wellhead platforms, welding the pipe joints and laying the pipeline behind it as it moves forward.

“Once the lay barge arrives at the wellhead platform the pipeline is laid down and a second barge will attach a riser from the sea bed to the offshore jacket which supports the wellhead platform. The top of the riser is connected to the piping on the platform deck and the connection to the LNG plant onshore will be completed.

“We started shore pull operations to lay the pipeline at the beginning of May 2008 and expect to have finished laying all the pipelines and the cables in September 2008,” Pat concludes.

Ron Collinson, Site Manager for the Pipeline Shore Pull for Qatargas 3&4 , says, “Here on the shore at Ras Laffan Industrial City we have begun the shore pull of pipeline PL8 from the DBKP 1 lay barge, which is two kilometres offshore in a water depth of some seven metres.

“The main 38-inch gas feeder pipelines into the Qatargas 3 and Qatargas 4 plants have already been laid onshore and we are waiting for the Emergency Shut Down valve to be installed by the onshore plant contractor. Our job here is to effect a shore pull, which means pulling sections of 38-inch pipeline from the lay barge for each of the two pipelines which are going to WHP 7 and WHP 8.

“The pipelines are 63 kilometres and 67 kilometres in length. We will first carry out the shore pull for the pipeline to WHP 8 and then complete the Dolphin crossing. With some seven kilometres of pipeline connected, the pipeline will be laid down on the sea bed and marked with a buoy. We will then carry out the shore pull for WHP 7 and bring it to the shore.

“Once we have done this, the lay barge will move away from the shore, continuously laying pipeline all the way to WHP 7, where the pipeline will be laid down on the sea bed. A separate vessel will pick up the pipeline to stalk the riser on to the jacket already installed. The lay barge will then return to where PL8 was laid down, pick up the pipeline for WHP 8 and again lay the pipeline all the way out to WHP 8,” says Ron.

Peter Clancy, J. Ray McDermott’s Site Supervisor for the Shore Pull, goes on to say, “We are using a linear Lucker winch, which is a specialised winch designed for this type of work. The winch is anchored underneath the ground with a 10-metre by 2-metre anchor buried 5 metres below the ground and attached to the Lucker winch by a pair of 4-inch anchor chains. This will provide the necessary anchorage for the winch as it pulls the pipeline to shore.

“The cable used to pull the pipeline ashore is a 3-inch steel wire rope. The pipeline has flotation devices attached to it to achieve negative buoyancy and sits on the bottom of the trench, which has been specifically dredged for this purpose. Once the pipeline has been laid, the trench will be back-filled with sand and the pipeline covered.

“In addition to the two 38-inch pipelines, we will be laying two 10-inch conduit pipes of 2.3 kilometres in length which will be welded onshore then pulled from the shore. These conduits will be used to house the subsea composite fibre optic/power cables which will carry the communications and power to WHP 7, 8 and 9,” concludes Peter.

Bredero Shaw is a company which specialises in coating pipes for the oil and gas industry. Sujith Kumar is Bredero Shaw’s Project Co-ordinator for the coating of the two pipelines, totalling 130 kilometres in length, which will bring natural gas from offshore production platforms in Qatar’s North Field to the Qatargas facilities at Ras Laffan Industrial City.

“Bredero Shaw has customers all over the world,” says Sujith. “In the Middle East we have carried out a lot of jobs for Qatar-based projects and right now we are coating pipes for both the Qatargas 3&4 project and the Pearl GTL project.

“The pipelines are made of carbon steel, a much higher quality of steel than is used in most industrial applications. However, this steel still needs to be coated to protect it from the effects of the salt water in which it will be submerged for many years. It also needs to be protected on the inside from the effects of the gas and liquids which will pass through the pipeline from the well head to the slug catcher on the shore.

“Before the pipes are coated on the inside, they are shot and grit-blasted and coated with the special chemical cocktail referred to as Shell ENSIS DW 1262, which is applied immediately after the shot blasting.

“We spray the outside of the pipeline with a three-layer coating of polypropylene, which gives the external surface of the pipeline the protection it needs.

“Finally, the outside is sprayed with concrete, which provides the necessary weight to submerge the pipeline and keep it anchored on the sea bed. The thickness of the concrete coating varies, depending on the depth at which the pipe will be laid, from between 40 to 120 millimetres.

“The pipes are each 12.2 metres long and have a diameter of 38 inches, with a wall thickness of 23.8 millimetres. The completed pipes weigh in excess of 7,000 kilos each,” concludes Sujith.